This year, we forecast US off-premise alcohol retail sales (i.e., alcohol purchased for at-home consumption) will grow by a modest 3.5% to $178.20 billion. This growth will accelerate slightly through 2027, driven by three areas of opportunity within the industry: ecommerce, customers willing to splurge on premium beverages, and at-home consumption trends.

The retail space is changing rapidly as marketers experiment with things like retail media, generative AI, and social commerce. In this discussion, Zia Daniell Wigder, Chief Content Officer, Insider Intelligence, talks about the trends on her radar and what she learned at Shoptalk.

Despite the word “recession” hanging in the air, US retailers had an okay Q4 in 2022. But some recurring themes persisted: Shoppers pulled back on discretionary spending, opted against home renovations, and generally avoided high prices. Here’s a look at how those trends affected earnings.

By 2026, US spending on ecommerce channel ads—a large subset of retail media—will be more than triple its 2020 level, per our forecast. Within the ecommerce channel, both search and display advertising are growing rapidly.

US ecommerce growth will come from large retail categories with historically low online sales share. And growth will stay healthy even as traditional drivers of online sales take a backseat to emerging categories.

The labor market is extremely challenging for retailers and restaurants: Quit rates are on the rise, which is making it difficult for companies seeking to improve the customer experience.

At least 10% of US ecommerce orders were returned each week from last November through mid-January, according to Salesforce. The return rate was as high as 16% in some weeks, a significant increase over the previous holiday season.

In-store shopping remains the largest US retail channel by both share and dollars. Growth overall will decelerate as economic worries lead consumers to pull back on spending.

With an increasing number of ways to discover, research, and buy products, the customer journey is becoming less linear and more spread across touchpoints in the physical and digital worlds. We break down these changes and what retailers need to do to stay in touch with their consumers.

Search is already a major component of retail media; social is the next integration. Advertisers still view social media as a discovery medium and retail media as a conversion-driver. But both platforms are “potentially full-funnel,” according to Liz Cole, executive director and US head of social at VMLY&R, speaking at our “Attention!” summit.

What do you get when you cross a $35 billion ad platform with a 160 million viewer streaming service? A snapshot of Amazon’s US retail media connected TV (CTV) potential. Luxury brand Movado is leveraging that potential to push video campaigns for Amazon Prime and Freevee viewers.

Worldwide, retail sales growth has rebounded after taking a dive in 2020, per our forecast. Though growth rates won’t return to their pre-pandemic levels, they will stay steady through 2026. Meanwhile, ecommerce sales growth has decelerated after a few banner years, falling to single digits from 2022 through the end of our forecast period.

Private 5G partnership could boost enterprise adoption: The rise in ransomware and security exploits in enterprise will accelerate private 5G solutions. Provider consolidation can go a long way in gaining adoption.

Brands were abuzz at eTail West 2023 in Palm Springs this week, talking about tech, loyalty, and integration. Here are our top five takeaways from brands like GNC, Poshmark, and Spanx.

This year, we forecast retail sales of cosmetic and beauty products will reach $86.42 billion, a 7.6% increase from 2022. This increase will be driven in large part by in-store sales and luxury beauty categories. But going forward, technology may play a large role in driving online sales.

Consumer device and behavior trends are affecting payment providers’ strategies across retail, P2P, B2B, disbursement, and cross-border channels. Here’s what that means for the payments ecosystem.

Temu, the recent entrant to the US ecommerce market, has taken the ecommerce world by storm since its September 2022 launch. The China-based etailer went from zero to 44.5 million unique visitors by December 2022, according to Comscore—a virtually unprecedented growth in traffic in just four months.

It won’t get much better than low single digits going forward. The next few years will see low growth by historic standards but not to a disastrous extent.

Forty-four percent of US adults plan to spend their normal amount on health and beauty products this year, according to a MetaPack survey. More than two-thirds said they’re not changing their spending on apparel (39%) or on DIY and gardening (34%).

Click and collect has matured as an ecommerce channel, but growth will slow as pandemic concerns alleviate.